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Rory answers her cell phone to hear Lorelai talking about a weird dream she had last night. "Weirder than the one where you step into a boxing ring," Rory asks, "and your hands are suddenly giant cream puffs?" Lorelai says it's way weirder. In this dream, she (cue sinister violins) took Paul Anka for a walk. Rory wonders what's so weird about that, seeing as how her mom walks Paul Anka every day. "No," Lorelai says. "Not the dog, Paul Anka. The real Paul Anka." Rory is amazed. "Whoa," she says. "Was he nice?" Lorelai says that he was very pleasant. Rory listens on, amazed, as Lorelai explains how, suddenly, Paul Anka chases a cat into the street. "The real Paul Anka?" Rory asks. But no, it's the dog Paul Anka. "You know, you didn't train him well enough," Rory says. "Too much affection, not enough discipline." Rory, she's talking about the dog, Paul Anka, not the daughter, you. Lorelai goes on with this amazing dream: she follows the dog Paul Anka into the market, where he, the real Paul Anka, apparently has a job. (The real) Paul Anka has one hilarious line, telling a customer she has a good "cucumber eye," after which we follow him to Luke's apartment, where he's giving a concert. Before you ask, it's the dog Paul Anka -- he's sitting at a little mic stand in front of an audience, presumably about to go on break toverbally abuse his band -- and though this is cute, and Lauren Graham slays me in the way she's talking about it, I kind of feel like someone wrote this scene to punish me by making me type it out. Ultimately, (the real) Paul Anka is found in the diner, sitting creepily on Babette's lap. He turns and sees the dog, Paul Anka, in the middle of the street. The time has come: the two Paul Ankas are face to face when a blinding light engulfs the town like some kind of Highlander showdown, and Lorelai wakes up. Paul Anka: There can be only one. "So I guess I was wondering," Lorelai concludes, "if you'd heard anything about a small Connecticut town being sucked up into an evil demon vortex, or cast into the fourth dimension or anything?" Uh, no, nothing like that, though I have heard a lot of rumors about this show being plunged into a hell dimension, if you can believe the raging emoticons flying around the internet. Rory says no, also, and adds that no bad news has recently come out about Paul Anka. After having Lorelai check her hands for signs of creampuffiness, she concludes that it's safe for everyone to go about their business.
Luke is comforting a looney Cesar about running the diner while he is gone for ten days. First of all, Luke has gone away before and left Cesar to run the place just fine; and secondly...TEN days? A junior high math team is going on a trip from CT to Philly for ten entire days? Did I miss that before? To do WHAT? The last time I went on a ten-day trip was my honeymoon, which yes, was a few days more than ten, but that covered three countries other than my own. Cesar is worried that he'll burn the place down, and doesn't appreciate it when Luke says he'll do fine. "Stop saying that," Cesar insists. "It's bad luck!" How is that bad luck? Exasperated, Luke says that, all right, Cesar's going to suck at it and give everybody salmonella. Luke asks Lorelai, who has just walked in, to tell Cesar everything will be fine. "And jinx it for him?" she says. "No way." Luke throws up his hands and notices that Lorelai is holding a hanging bag. It's packed with some slightly dressier clothes, she says, just in case. Instead of thanking her, he brushes her off, saying that he probably won't need it during the ten days of diners and fast food with the kids. "See, that's what the phrase 'just in case' covers," she explains, though I think it's up to Luke to learn these lessons on his own. However, since he took Anna up on her nice gesture, why not do the same with Lorelai's? That's all I'm saying. He curmudgeonishly agrees to take it, but still doesn't thank her.